A data storage server may implement data de-duplication to prevent or eliminate multiple copies of the same data from being stored in the storage server. Unfortunately, existing implementations fail to support data de-duplication in a distributed network comprising multiple storage servers.
Moreover, if there are a large number of users in the distributed network, availability of data may be reduced and performance may be negatively impacted. Availability of data may be reduced, for example, if data is stored in a storage server that is non-operational. Performance may be negatively impacted, for example, if data is stored in storage server that is located remotely from a user requesting the data or if a large amount of data is stored in a storage server that is overloaded with data requests.